Monday, September 24, 2018

Cowboy Charm School ~ Lone Star Book Blog Tours Promo, Excerpt, & Giveaway!


COWBOY CHARM SCHOOL 
HAYWIRE BRIDES, #1
by
MARGARET BROWNLEY

  Sub-genre: Western / Clean Romance
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Date of Publication: September 4, 2018
Number of Pages: 384

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When Texas Ranger Brett Tucker accidentally derails a wedding, he's determined to bring the estranged couple back together...but he never dreamed he'd start falling for the bride!

Texas Ranger Brett Tucker hates to break up a wedding, but the groom—notorious criminal Frank Foster—is a danger to any woman. So he busts into the church, guns blazing...only to find he has the wrong man.

STOP THAT WEDDING!

Bride-to-be Kate Denver is appalled by her fiancĂ©'s over-the-top reaction to the innocent mistake and calls off the wedding—for good. Guilt-ridden, Brett's desperate to get them back on track. But the more time he spends with Kate, the harder he falls...and the more he yearns to prove that he's her true match in every way.


"Light and airy as cotton candy, this tale charms." 
-- Publishers Weekly


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From Cowboy Charm School
By Margaret Brownley

Could she ever forgive the man for breaking up her wedding?

“Miss Denver. I’m afraid we didn’t get properly introduced the other day. I’m Brett Tucker, Texas Ranger.”
             “I know who you are,” she said, her voice as hard as the peanut brittle displayed in the glass counter standing between them.
            He sucked in his breath. If looks could kill, he’d be a goner for sure. Not that he could blame her. Thanks to him, not only was her interrupted wedding the talk of the town, the Haywire Dispatch had planted the story on the front page beneath a bold headline: Wedding Ends in Disaster.
            Brett cleared his throat. “I…eh…came to apologize again for what happened. I had no idea that there were two Frank Fosters.” Thinking that an explanation was in order, he continued, “The Foster I was looking for is a wanted man. I’ve been on his trail for a long while.” Twice Brett had almost caught him. Both times the man had slipped away.
 “When I heard that someone by that name was getting married, I immediately assumed it was the fugitive I’ve been chasing.”
            Miss Denver crossed her arms. “Next time you might want to look before you leap.”
“I hope to God there isn’t a next time, ma’am. I never want to stop another wedding.” He rubbed his still sore chin.  “All I could think about was saving you.”
“Saving me?” She stared at him. “You don’t even know me.”
“Not personally, ma’am, that’s true. But the Frank Foster I’m after is a danger to any woman.” She said nothing and he continued. “I hope you’ll let me make it up to you. If there’s anything I can do…?”
            “I believe you’ve done quite enough already, Mr. Tucker,” she said, her voice as cool as the eyes boring into him.
            He drew in his breath. She wasn’t making it easy but then, why should she? Still, he wasn’t ready to give up. “There must be something. I tried bailing your fiancĂ© out of jail, but he refused to accept my help.”
            Something flickered in the depths of her eyes. “If you’re serious about wanting to do something, you’ll leave town and not return.”
            Tilting his Stetson forward, he rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m afraid that will be a little hard to do, ma’am.” A crime wave had hit the county, overwhelming local lawmen. The opportunity to serve as a special Texas Ranger couldn’t have come at a more opportune time. Brett was sent to Haywire to assist the sheriff in bringing the culprits to justice, but the reason he’d volunteered for the job was far more personal.
“I’m here on special commission from Captain McMurray.”
            Miss Denver greeted his news with a look of disdain. “Then I suggest you attend to your business and stay away from the rest of us.”
            “As you wish,” he said.  He made quick strides toward the door before stopping. Glancing over his shoulder, he found her watching him. “Your dress,” he said. “I’d feel a whole lot better if you’d let me pay for any damage.” He had no idea the cost of a wedding gown, but it couldn’t be cheap.
             “Go.” she said with a beseeching look. “Please. Just…go.”


New York Times bestselling author MARGARET BROWNLEY has penned more than forty-five novels and novellas. She's a two-time Romance Writers of American RITA® finalist and has written for a TV soap. She is also a recipient of the Romantic Times Pioneer Award.  

Her story, A Pony Express Christmas, will appear this fall in the Old West Christmas Brides collection, and book two of her Haywire Brides series will be published May 2019.  Not bad for someone who flunked eighth-grade English.  Just don't ask her to diagram a sentence.

◆  WEBSITE  ◆  FACEBOOK  ◆  TWITTER  ◆
◆  AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE  ◆
◆  GOODREADS AUTHOR PAGE  ◆ 


 --------------------------------------- 
GIVEAWAY!  GIVEAWAY!  GIVEAWAY!
 Signed Copy + $10 Amazon Gift Card
  September 24-October 3, 2018
CHECK OUT THE OTHER GREAT BLOGS ON THE TOUR:
9/24/18
Excerpt
9/24/18
Excerpt
9/25/18
Review
9/26/18
Author Interview
9/26/18
Top Ten List
9/27/18
Review
9/28/18
Guest Post
9/28/18
Author Interview
9/29/18
Review
9/30/18
Guest Post
9/30/18
Excerpt
10/1/18
Review
10/2/18
Guest Post
10/3/18
Review
10/3/18
Review


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Wednesday, September 19, 2018

Borderline ~ Audio Book Blog Tour Promo, Review, & Giveaway!


BORDERLINE
LASSITER/MARTINEZ CASE FILES #1
BY JOSEPH BADAL
Narrated by Pamela Almand
Length: 8 hours and 40 minutes
Publisher: Suspense Publishing
Released: May 17, 2016
Sub-Genres: Police Procedural / Mystery


Barbara Lassiter and Susan Martinez, two New Mexico homicide detectives, are assigned to investigate the murder of a wealthy Albuquerque socialite. They soon discover that the victim, a narcissistic borderline personality, played a lifetime game of destroying people's lives. As a result, the list of suspects in her murder is extensive.

The detectives find themselves enmeshed in a helix of possible perpetrators with opportunity, means, and motive - and soon question giving their best efforts to solve the case the more they learn about the victim's hideous past.

Their job gets tougher when the victim's psychiatrist is murdered and DVDs turn up that show the doctor had serial sexual relationships with a large number of his female patients, including the murder victim.




Joseph Badal is the author of 13 suspense novels: Borderline; Dark Angel (Lassiter/Martinez Case Files series); Evil Deeds, Terror Cell, The Nostradamus Secret, The Lone Wolf Agenda, Death Ship; Sins of the Fathers (The Danforth Saga); The Motive; Obsessed (The Curtis Chronicles); and stand-alones The Pythagorean Solution, Shell Game, and Ultimate Betrayal.

All of his books draw on personal experiences and historical events. Joe has been judged “One of the 50 Authors You Should Be Reading" and has received 3 Gold Medals and 2 Silver Medals from the Military Writers Society of America, and The Tony Hillerman Award for Best Fiction Book of the Year in 2014 and 2016. He also writes a blog titled Everyday Heroes. See past postings at http://www.josephbadalbooks.com



You can read more about Joe on his website or email him at josephbadalbooks@aol.com

Website⎮Twitter⎮Facebook⎮Instagram

Narrator Bio


Appearing in a national Tylenol commercial in 1995 sparked her interest and The Captain’s Voice was the result. She is now an award-winning SAG/AFTRA narrator and voiceover talent and has done commercials, videogames, e-learning, audiobooks, and phone messaging for clients including Microsoft, Brilliance Audio, Johnson & Johnson, Audible, La Costa Resort, Jet Blue, Delta Airlines, Dell, Blackstone Publishing, the American Red Cross, Canadian Realtors…all the way to being the English voice for The Hotels and Casinos of Monte Carlo!

She was nominated for an Audie Award for her 5th audiobook narration (Come To Me Alive, by Leah Atwood) and went on to also earn a Voice Arts Award for non-fiction for In Movement There Is Peace, by Elaine and Joseph Foster; another Voice Arts nomination for Cyber Crisis: It’s Personal Now, by William Kieper; and recently was awarded an Earphones Award by AudioFile Magazine for Husbands and Other Sharp Objects, by Marilyn Simon Rothstein for Brilliance Audio.

She has served on the board of several charities, including Patrons of the HeArts and local Beaches Emergency Assistance Ministries (BEAM) and lives with her husband Amos in Atlantic Beach. Pam plays piano for her local church, still returns to Telluride, Colorado every summer, loves biking, golf, hiking, and-though she’s been all over the globe!- she still counts world travel among her most-loved hobbies.

Website⎮Twitter⎮Facebook⎮Soundcloud
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HALL WAYS REVIEW: Audio book review. You know an author has some talent when he can make you despise a character within the first few pages – or in this case, minutes, since I read Borderline with my ears. Readers meet the vile Victoria immediately and aren’t surprised when she’s brutally murdered. Readers soon realize that Victoria is just the tip of the loathsome character iceberg, and off they are taken on an enthralling police procedural murder mystery. Even better? It’s “inspired by actual events,” according to the introduction. I am IN!

With the main characters, Barbara Lassiter and Susan Martinez, both being female law enforcement officers, it’s not surprising some sexism and workplace harassment elements are added-in. Each of the women responds differently to the incidents, but it is common ground and one of the things that bonds the detectives to each other. They are a team on the job, but readers also see the personal sides of both Susan and Barbara and how they support each other in and outside of their jobs. Their relationship and the power of females supporting each other is one of the best aspects of Borderline, and I expect to see this friendship continue to grow in future installments of the series.

There are multiple story lines and more suspects and twists and turns than can be counted. But as good detectives will do, Barbara and Susan get organized and methodically pick through the clues and piece together the cases. There are a few of the detectives’ reactions that are odd, and a few clichĂ©s including the right detectives being pulled from the case (but continuing to work on it anyway), other detectives behaving badly, and the mandatory bad detective come-uppance. What saves the day, again, is the depth of Barbara’s and Susan’s characters and their personalities being brought into the story. They feel realistic in their struggles to balance their lives and their careers and in reconciling when personal and professional crash against each other.

“Barbara had now solved two murder cases in less than twenty-four hours; she’d never felt worse in her entire life.”

By the conclusion of Borderline, the murders are solved (but not without a few surprises).  There is some resolution to the crises in the main characters’ lives and they are both moving forward. Rather than a feel-good, happy ending, I felt sorry for Barbara after all she had been through and where she is at the end. It should have felt hopeful, but for some reason it felt lonely. And then there is a peculiar epilogue that feels unnecessary, followed by about ten minutes of summaries of other books and series by the author, all of which took me out of the story a bit.

ABOUT THE NARRATION: What’s to love? Flawless delivery, no technical issues, and narrator Pamela Almand’s ability to distinguish the huge cast of characters’ voices so that they are all unique and identifiable. No small deed. And kudos to her for carrying-off Connie’s character. Well done. Where I struggled to enjoy the narration was in the speed (I immediately had to go to 1.25x, but this is the norm for me) and that I didn’t particularly like the voices. Granted, I didn’t really like the characters, either, and one of them is supposed to sound annoying – and oh, it is – but others don’t necessarily fit. Victoria’s voice, for example, though EXCELLENT in its snobbery, seems like it belongs to a much older woman. And some characters have odd accents. Deal breaker? Absolutely not. I enjoyed listening to her narration and would try another audio book with her at the helm.

Borderline pushes a little past the boundary of being a cozy mystery and is a bit grittier with stronger language and more sexual. Fortunately, the sex isn’t graphic, and the language is appropriate for the situations and setting.  Author Joseph Badal knows how to write characters and plot a story that keeps readers engaged and thinking and trying to figure out not just whodunit but why. I’ll be adding other titles by Badal to my TBR list.

Dark Angel, book two in the Lassiter/Martinez Case Files series, came out in early 2017 (but isn’t an audio book yet), and I plan on getting the print version to see what’s next for this detective team. If Almand narrates it, all the better because now her voices define the main characters.

Thank you to Audiobookworm Promotions, the author, and the narrator for providing me with an audio download in exchange for my honest opinion – the only kind I give. 

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Pamela Almand. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.



Giveaway
3 Month Audible Subscription,
Audio Book Copy of Borderline,
Captain's Voice Coffee Mug,
& Portable Speakers
Runs Sep. 18th-25th⎮Open internationally
Borderline Giveaway: Borderline Audiobook + Coffee Mug




Sep. 18th:
Dab of Darkness Book Reviews
The Book Junkie Reads . . .

Sep. 19th:
Hall Ways Blog
AudioSpy

Sep. 20th:
Book Addict
What Emma Read Next

Sep. 21st:
Turning Another Page

Sep. 22nd:
Fangirl Nation

Sep. 23rd:
Lynn's Romance Enthusiasm

Sep. 24th:
2 Girls and A Book

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